MOOC as an educational product: requirements for the content, design, promotion and accompaniment of students

MOOCs are increasingly becoming not only image projects but also commercial products, and like other products, are moving in the market. In the broad sense, promotion is not only the search and attraction of potential consumers of the product. These are special requirements for the content of the course, its design and presentation, as well as the accompaniment of listeners during and after training. Inadequate attention to at least one of these aspects of promotion can significantly reduce the commercial success of the MOOC. The purpose of this work is to identify the features of the promotion of MOOC as an educational product. First of all, these are special requirements to the content. Since paid MOOC are usually aimed at obtaining specific practical skills and knowledge in a highly specialized area, the training materials that are placed in it should be aimed at developing practical skills. The listener should receive the information from the course and apply it in solving a specific problem. If the material is not applied, but only theoretical, then the students will refuse to pay for the course and its full passage. The form of their representation is of great importance for the successful sale of educational products. MOOC is not an exception here. Here we are talking not only about design techniques and following the corporate style of the developer organization. The presentation includes work on the inclusion of the course materials in a broader content and emotional context: a story about the university as a whole, the faculty, the department, the teachers who developed the course, their biographies and research topics, feedback from the participants of the course, presentations of their application projects received skills in practice. This information will allow students to get to know the university, where they will be taught in the format of the MOOC virtually, and increase the trust in the source of new knowledge and skills. In many ways, successful sales of the product are provided by the effective use of advertising tools. To promote MOOC, you need to use: announcements about the launch of the course on the university’s website (faculty, department), publication of information in educational catalogs, specialized thematic portals and forums, paid ads for contextual and targeted advertising, promotion of the course in social media. When working in social media, it is necessary to determine which social network your audience is in, to create a community and invite potential and already real listeners into it, and publish interesting materials on the subject of the course. It is also recommended to do a search optimization of the site, the page where the information about the MOOC is located. Despite the fact that MOOC appeared due to the development of technologies and e-learning, they promote these courses not only in online space, but also in offline. Offline - the promotion is designed, especially for university students, where courses are developed. The MOOC format is characterized by a low percentage of trainees who completed their studies regarding the number of enrolled students. Therefore, work to keep listeners on the course allows you to increase sales of educational products. After all, very often in MOOC fees are charged not for access to knowledge, but for confirming the received course of knowledge and skills through the final assignment and issuing certificates of completion. To the trainee who completed the specialization, the authors should continue to send useful materials to the post: books, articles on the topic, useful tips, additional tools, master classes, webinars for advanced ones. If there are updates when the course is restarted, it is also reported to former listeners. Thus, communication with listeners is not interrupted, due to which it is possible to invite listeners to other programs related to the subject area, that is, to sell related educational products. An example of the application of the presented principles for the development, promotion and maintenance of MOOC can be the result of updating one of the courses of Tomsk State University. Audit of forms of work when accompanying students during the training course showed that not all of the above methods of motivation and retention are applied. Therefore, when updating the course, feedback questionnaires were developed and integrated, operational preparation and publication of answers to questions in the forum were organized, regular notification of the deadline and additional materials by mail was planned, additional webinars were prepared, a community for the Vkontakte participants, published tips and recommendations on the topic, cases, reviews of questions from listeners. Measurements of statistics on the listener of the course for 5 months before the modernization and 5 months after showed the following results: an increase in the number of new listeners by 300%; increase in 200% the share of trainees who completed training and paid the certificate; a 10-fold decrease in the number of negative reviews, an increase of 2.5 times the positive.

Keywords

Authors

References